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I’m really enjoying how much is going on in this title at the moment, it’s bursting at the scenes with subplots, but it’s all tied together by the twin master-plans of Tony and Mandarin. At the moment, it looks like Mandy is on top, but you can’t count out Iron Man. He’s had the Iron Man tech removed from his body, but he’s planning on getting it back, and of course there’s the secret new Iron Man, with his cool black armour. It is Rhodey in that suit right? It looks like him, but we only got one panel. I suppose it’s no surprise that it would be him, but he’s been Iron Man before, I would probably have preferred someone new. I really liked the flashback scenes that paralleled Tony and Ezekiel Stane’s childhoods, I’m actually starting to feel sorry for Zeke, even though he’s a complete psycho. I also love the different art style Larroca uses for these flashbacks, very cool. Good to see that the crazy former Detroit Steel hasn’t been forgotten, although I suppose we did see his little head pop up in the background last issue. Spymaster was cool once again, he’s a very cool-looking villain, but I’m glad he was beaten, especially since it was from a surprising source, go Wyche! This book is moving slowly at the moment, but the endgame is very promising, I think this may very well go down as the best Iron Man epic ever if Fraction sticks the landing.

I still think World's Most Wanted and Stark Disassembled were awesome stories but that was about all I can enjoy from Fraction's Iron Man run. This arc seems to be FINALLY finishing up some long standing plot points and I love some of Fraction's ideas here. It just needs a stronger editor to keep the story moving and remove any extraneous dialogue that doesn't seem to relate to anything else and is only there because Fraction had an idea and then dropped it before the next panel begins. There were way too many moments here where someone says something completely unrelated to the conversation/scene and then no one even reacts to that dialogue. It made me feel that I was missing pages but it was usually a panel in the MIDDLE of the page.

Larroca is still doing a great job. Stark having Reed help him out was good. Rhodey's brand new, brand new armor was pretty spectacular, and Spymaster's story is finally getting concluded (but did he really uses Spy•Master as his password? REALLY?).

Like I said, this just needs a some stronger editor skills and it could be pretty good stuff. The concepts are all there. They just need a bit more Storytelling 101 (in the form of an editor doing his job or maybe a co-writer).